Complaint filed on Mount Shasta ballot measure

A court will decide whether a landmark city ordinance banning cloud seeding and water bottling in Mount Shasta will be on November's ballot.

The group behind the proposed ordinance has filed a legal complaint against Siskiyou County Clerk Colleen Setzer with the Siskiyou County Superior Court, said Molly Brown, one of the organizers for the Mount Shasta Community Rights Project.

Brown said she hoped Setzer would respond by putting the ordinance back on the ballot.

Instead, Setzer responded with a five-page declaration reiterating why she pulled the ordinance from the ballot Aug. 12.

Setzer said the group didn't properly file, certify or pay for its petition. Setzer declined to comment to the Record Searchlight, saying the matter would be decided in court.

The first court proceeding is set for Sept. 10.

Brown said Setzer's declaration, which outlines questions about who should be the election official, doesn't justify her taking the ordinance off the ballot.

"It's completely confusing and contradictory," Brown said. "The thing shouldn't be thrown off the ballot, because they don't know what end is up."

In explaining the removal of the proposed ordinance in a six-page letter to the Mount Shasta City Council, Setzer said the group circulated a petition with different language than what it filed with the clerk's office.

Brown said one sentence was different in the 13-page petition, which the 24 members of her grass-roots group spent 20 months working to draft and collecting signatures. About a third — 700 — of Mount Shasta's 2,072 voters signed the petition.

After the error was discovered, the Mount Shasta City Council voted to keep the proposed ordinance on the ballot.

Setzer overrode that decision.

The ordinance would ban corporate cloud seeding and bulk water bottling in Mount Shasta. The city's attorney said passing the ordinance could lead to legal questions about whether the mountain town is attempting to supersede state and federal laws.

In her declaration arguing to keep the ordinance off the ballot, Setzer said there isn't enough time now to put it back on. She said the deadline to submit sample ballots to the printer is Tuesday and the ballots are due Sept. 7.

"It is not possible, without delaying sample ballots and ballots for the entire election, to place the measure on the ballot at this late date given resource constrictions," Setzer wrote.